;
Right off the bat, I don’t think Ben is dead. I think this is just a great swerve. If nothing else, I think the “island isn’t done with him yet” card will be played.
Speaking of Ben, was Ben’s dad always this big of an asshole? We know he was a drunk and “a bad dad,” but I don’t remember him being portrayed as abusive.
We also know that it’s been four years since young Ben met Richard Alpert. Poor kid has been waiting and waiting “to be rescued.” No wonder grown-up Ben is so testy.
Other than Ben’s apparent death, for me, the big story (for this reviewer) was the appearance of the great William Sanderson. Casting such a genre veteran (BLADE RUNNER, DEADWOOD, NEWHART) is the best thing the producers have done since the appearance of Clancy Brown (HIGHLANDER, SUPERMAN cartoon, BUCKAROO BANZAI).
We also learned more about Ilana. She apparently was hired by the family of the guy Sayid killed on the golf course, but he thinks she might work for Ben. Maybe she works for Widmore. Either way, is she a real US Marshal?
I hope that was good editing, or else the producers will be getting heat from the ASPCA.
All in all, apart from the “shocking” ending, this was not the most amazing episode. Let’s just get to next week already.
Posted by Mark Coale
As a certified idiot, I didn’t expect that ending in the least. Clearly I blocked out everything from last week. I even thought Sayid was growing sympathetic to Ben, seeing his situation (which maybe he was, and that’s why he cried when he shot him). Anyway, this show takes balls-out liberties with the butterfly effect, but I still can’t wait to see where it goes. I saw one suggestion that Ben will survive, and hence become the skeezball we know because of Sayid.
I also am reminded of Metal Gear Solid 3. It takes place before the others, so if you shoot and kill a villain who’s in a later game, your commander yells at you for creating a time paradox.
Funny enough, I was looking up William Sanderson on IMDB to see what Batman eps he was in. Totally spoiled that he was going to be in the next ep of Lost.
I think Evie’s got it — Sayid “created” Ben by his betrayal. I want to rescreen the episode where “Henry Gale” meets/is tortured by Sayid and look for clues that Ben recognizes him.
Though Ilana didn’t assent to Sayyid’s id of her as a “bounty hunter,” I’d say she’s not anything strictly legal or she would’ve id’d herself as such.
Two things:
1- With last night’s episode, I think the show’s writers have to come up with some thing unique in how to deal with what Sayid did. I hope they don’t take the easy way out by having Richard finding young Ben and therefore saving him. I hope they take this new development down a path we never saw coming.
2- I’ve found the show to draaaaaaag since Jack and the others “landed” in the 70s with Sawyer. I hope they get back to the present so we can see how Locke deals with Ben.
Wesley
What animal was in this episode? My mind is a blank… (Given the ASPCA comment)
With chickens getting their neck snapped on LOST and their heads chopped off on SOUTH PARK last night, I’m sending a mass anti-chicken agenda is being enacted by the liberal drive-by media. * Adjusts tinfoil hat *
Widmore remembered Locke when they met the future, so I was trying to remember if Ben recognized Sayid when they first met. I’m also curious how the writers handle the death of young Ben effecting the Ben of the present, assuming he’s actually dead. Wouldn’t Present Ben have tried to prevent Sayid from going back to the island, or want revenge? I guess we’ll find out, or not… I’m also trying to remember when the girl (Charlotte?) died and then Faraday later saw her as a child. Were they in the her past when she died? Ug, my head hurts.
Given that we’ve been told that “Whatever happened, happened” and that the island can bring people back to life, I don’t think that Young Ben is going to be dead for long.
For the past few episodes, I’ve kept wondering “Where is Faraday, where is Faraday?”, because I feel he is the key to resolving this whole time travel issue, so I’m going to take a more widescreen approach to this post because I think my wife figured it out this morning:
Faraday is Jacob.
I’m sure this theory has been presented before, and I’m sure I’ve dismissed it because I wanted to give Jacob a more mythological/historical essence, but suddenly, to me, it makes sense. Faraday is stuck in the 1970s but he’s been missing. Obviously he’s lost it since the death of Charlotte. He’s gone out in the jungle, built the cabin, and begun plotting how to change time to save Charlotte. I think he’s going to get to the ancient wheel at the same time Sun does, and they are both going to turn it at the same time in different time periods and that will cause everything to fall into the present, setting up the “war” between Ben and Widmore.
Young Ben will survive the gunshot wound because Jack the surgeon will save him.
After Faraday turns the ancient wheel, he will travel to the cabin where he will become stuck in time. From there, he becomes Jacob, using time, and Richard, and Ben, and Locke, and Christian, and so forth, as tools to unstick him. (And maybe this is Eloise’s agenda, to save her stuck-in-time son.)
The war will rage (in the final season), somehow Ben and Widmore will be transported back in time, they will kill each other, and they will be the two skeletons found in the cave.
Of course, there are a lot of gaps left to filled in, and, of course, every previous theory I come up with gets shot down within two weeks, but for the time being I’m sticking with this set of consolidated puzzle pieces!
“Young Ben will survive the gunshot wound because Jack the surgeon will save him.”
I can see that. In fact, according to the previews for next weeks’ episode, Jack, Kate & Hurly are going to be persona non grata with the Dharma folk.
Perhaps injured Ben will be brought back to camp and despite staying in his workman guise, Jack will step forward and surgically save Ben (without knowing that he’s THAT Ben). Given the suspicious nature of the Dharma bunch, this janitorial workman with surgical skills will raise a bunch of questions and force them into “house arrest” of the three new arrivals.
(and the symmetry of Jack surgically saving Ben twice makes some sort of sense.)
I loved that, after mopping the floor, Roger takes Sayid’s sandwhich and tosses it on the floor in a fit of anger. I want to see the deleted scene when he sheepishly creeps back, broom in hand. “I’m… uh…just gonna go ahead and clean that up now.”
Sayid didn’t create Ben. Ben’s evil father created Ben.
I like Kingman’s Jacob theory, though!
My wife and I went back and rewatched the episode were Sayid and Ben meet. Ben is in a net and crying for help. There is no recognition moment.
I like the nickname that’s been given to Ilana, the bounty hunter who captured Sayid:
Booty Fett
Regardless of how much of the plot they claim to have planned ahead of time, there are still a lot of details that the writers are making up as they go along. Bits of continuity such as “Ben was shot by grown-up Sayid back in the 70s” almost certainly hadn’t been figured out when Henry was first introduced. The best you can hope for in cases like this is that the characterization isn’t blatantly wrong (e.g. Ben clearly not anticipating that Sayid is capable of violence).
So is Ben going to wake up from being struck down by Sun and “remember” that he was shot by Sayid in the 1970s? I don’t see history being changed as much as a group of people from the future integrating into the past at a particular point, the 1970s. Time is still linear, and what actually happened still happened. The time line is simply being compounded.
Or…
OR….
OR OR OR OR OR….
Amnesia.
Kingman, I kind of like your theory, but two problems with it:
1) The cabin was built by Horace
2) Faraday probably has a large interest in the Orchid. Once it has been built (assuming it hasn’t already), then this theory will match up better.
if jack saves ben, i think jack’s going to become jacob.
that is officially the first lost theory i’ve ever posted. i feel like i should get a cake. or at least like a “way to go!” ribbon.
There’s no need to look for a “recognition” of Sayid by Ben. Why? Because as we saw in “Expose'”, Ben had already seen Sayid and all the other survivors in the Swan via the Pearl station camera feed well before pretending to be Henry Gale. He got his shock of seeing him done with well before ending up in Danielle’s trap.
“somehow Ben and Widmore will be transported back in time, they will kill each other, and they will be the two skeletons found in the cave.”
But weren’t the two skeletons identified as male and female? Ben or Widmore would have to go through some other interesting changes to make this theory true… ;-)
My head hurts. The show makes me feel stupid when all of a sudden I realize the word play involved in the name “Christian Shepherd” and then think I should have figured out that the first time they mentioned Jack’s father’s name. Yes, I think we’re seeing the butterfly effect and actions from the 70s Dharma bums are actually creating what they knew as the past when they were on the island the original time in the “present.”
So, who will be the first one to cheat- Sawyer or Juliet? Poor Jack, Sawyer’s taken two different women away from him. Maybe he’ll return the favor.
I had forgotten the skeletal remains were of a man and a woman.
I forgot that Horace built the cabin. Do we know why he built the cabin?
Sigh. Just like that, two theories shot down.
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